Question

I am reading several files from linux /proc fs and I will have to insert those values in a database. I should be as optimal as possible. So what is cheaper:

i) to cast then to int, while I stored then in memory, for later cast to string again while I build my INSERT statement

ii) or keep them as string, just sanitizing the values (removing ‘:’, spaces, etc…)

iii) What should I take in account to learn to make this decision?

I am already doing a split in the lines, because the order they came is not good enough for me.

Thanks,

Pedro

Edit – Clarification

Sorry guys, my scenario is the following: I am measuring cpu, memory, network, disk, etc… every 10 seconds. We are developing our database system, so I cannot count with anything more than just INSERT statements.

I got interested in this optimization because the frequency off parsing data. Its gonna be write once – there will be no updates over the data after it is written.

Answer 1

You seem to be performing some archiving activity [write-once, read-probably-atmost-once] (storing the DB for a later rare/non-frequent use), if not, you should put the optimization emphasize based on how the data will be read (not written).

If this is the archiving case, maybe inseting BLOBs (binary large objects, [or similar concepts]) into the DB will be more efficient.

Addition:
Apparently it will depend on how you will read the data. Are you just listing the data for browse purpose later on, or there will be more complex fetching queries based on the benchmark values.
For example if you are later performing something like: SELECT * from db.Log WHERE log.time > time1 and Max (Memory) < 5000 then it is best to keep each data in its original format (int in integer, string in String, etc) so that the main data processing is left to DB server.